Gravmanji
by RockSunner
Summary: What is the strange board game that Dipper and Mabel have just discovered in their attic bedroom? This story combines Gravity Falls with the Jumanji cartoon TV series.
1. I'm Game

What is the strange board game that Dipper and Mabel have just discovered in their attic bedroom? This story combines Gravity Falls with the Jumanji TV cartoon series. All characters belong to Disney and Columbia TriStar Television, not me.

 **Gravmanji**

 **Chapter 1 – I'm Game**

Dipper and Mabel were moving into the attic of the Mystery Shack, the home/tourist trap of their Grunkle Stan.

"This attic is amazing," said Mabel. "Check out all my splinters!"

"And there's a goat on my bed," said Dipper.

"Hello, friend," Mabel said to the goat. "Yes, you can keep chewing on my sweater."

"Not on my bed," said Dipper. He gave the goat a push and it jumped off the bed and ran down the stairs.

"Aw, you're spoiling the fun with my new friend," said Mabel.

"It's great you can look on the bright side," said Dipper. "All I can think about is how we got sent here to live in this wreck of a place because Mom and Dad died in a car crash in Canada."

"I miss them too, but we have to move on, Dipper," said Mabel. "I'll find something to take your mind off of it."

She dug around under her bed. "Whee! Dust bunnies!"

"Great," said Dipper.

"I found this old board game," said Mabel, pulling out a wooden box from under the bed.

"Gravmanji. A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind," Dipper read from the cover. "That part fits, all right. But it's boring. It looks like just roll the dice and move. No strategy."

"Then I have an equal chance of winning, for once," said Mabel.

"It also says Gravmanji provides a clue to help the player finish the turn," said Dipper. "What could that mean?"

"Let's try it and see," said Mabel.

"All right, I'm game," said Dipper.

He threw the dice and got a three. A game piece jumped onto the board and moved three spaces.

"This is more high-tech than I thought," said Dipper. "The pieces must be magnetized."

Words swirled around in the round orb in the center: "CLEAR AS ICE, BUT WORTH THE PRICE."

A moment later the swirls expanded around them.

"Hey, what's going on?" asked Dipper.

When the swirling stopped they were in the middle of a jungle, at night. The air was warm and humid. All around they heard bird calls and the snarls of beasts. They couldn't see far in any direction because of the dense trees around their clearing. Some of the vines hanging from the trees were moving. Were they snakes?

"What happened?" asked Mabel.

"I don't know," said Dipper.

A snarl from the bushes drew their attention. A large creature emerged with glowing yellow eyes and mushrooms growing on its shoulders. Before it could get to them, a man leaped from the side and fought it off.

The man walked up to them. He wore goggles, and he had a long, dark trench coat. They noticed the man had six fingers on each of his hands.

"Who are you?" asked Mabel. "Where are we?"

"Gravmanji," the man whispered.


	2. The Only Game in Town

**Chapter 2 – The Only Game in Town**

There was gunfire nearby. The mysterious twelve-fingered man grunted and ducked into the bushes.

Before Dipper and Mabel could move, another man came out of the jungle, a hunter dressed in khakis, wearing a pith helmet. He carried an old-fashioned blunderbuss.

"Thank you for saving us," Mabel blurted out, more in hope than in certainty.

The man looked at them coldly, and spoke in the accent of an aristocrat. "My name is Van Northwest. Follow me. Do not speak."

With no better options available, they followed. Van Northwest cut the way through entangling jungle vines with complete confidence.

As they crossed a river on what looked like large stepping-stones, one of the "stones" turned out to be a hippopotamus when Dipper stepped on it. It bellowed and tried to throw Dipper off, as he desperately clung to its back.

Van Northwest fired his gun once into the air, and the hippo froze in fear. Dipper got across.

It was a long walk to Van Northwest's hunting lodge on a hill. When the arrived, they found a few monkeys had raided the place in the hunter's absence. They had dragged out an assortment of old crossbows, spears, and other weapons and were playing with them.

"Outrageous!" Van Northwest shouted. "Riff-raff! Begone, blast you!"

He fired at the monkeys, who scampered away into the jungle, screeching. A monkey got away with one of the crossbows.

They entered the lodge, which was richly decorated but with an odor of decay. The walls were full of trophy heads. Dipper noticed what he hoped were fake trophies of human heads mounted alongside elephants, water buffalo, and tigers.

Dipper and Mabel stood side by side in front of a large fireplace.

"Now you may speak," said Van Northwest. "Tell me who you are, and why you were in the middle of the jungle, speaking to that flea-bitten cur."

"I'm Mabel, and this is my brother, Dipper. We were just playing a game," said Mabel.

"A game, you say?"

"The Gravmanji game," said Dipper. "We rolled the dice, and a clue came up..."

"And then here we were," said Mabel.

"A clue? How interesting," said Van Northwest. "What was it?"

"I forget," said Mabel.

"How could you forget! It may be important," said Dipper. "Clear as ice, but worth the price."

"What makes you a master of the game, all of a sudden?" asked Mabel. "You don't know any more about this than I do."

"At least I memorized the clue," said Dipper.

"The Crystal Mask. An artifact of great value..." muttered Van Northwest to himself. He re-loaded his gun as Dipper and Mabel squabbled.

"I didn't see you saving us out there in the jungle. I'll take Mr. Van Northwest as my game partner from here on," said Mabel.

"Mabel, this isn't really happening," said Dipper. "This is all in our imaginations, or something. It has to be. It's just a game."

Van Northwest pointed his gun at them, and snarled, "Gravmanji is not a game!"

Arms reached down from inside the fireplace and grabbed Dipper and Mabel out of the way of the shotgun blast. The twelve-fingered man was hanging onto a vine with his legs. He helped them grab onto the vine and they all scrambled out onto the roof.

Below, Van Northwest fired up at the roof, making large holes near their feet.

Their rescuer pulled a crossbow from his back and fired at Van Northwest through the hole. The bolt went through the hunter and pinned him to the ground.

"Come on," said their rescuer.

They leaped down into the building through a hole and ran out the door, scattering the monkeys that had gathered again outside.

They ran, finally stopping in a clearing to catch their breaths.

"My name's Ford. Talk to me. Who are you, and how did you get here?" asked the twelve-fingered man.

Dipper was cautious after the way talking with the last stranger had turned out, and decided to lie. "I'm Clyde, and this is my sister, Bonnie. We're twins."

"I can understand parents giving twins matching names, but calling you after a famous pair of criminals? That's worse than what happened with me and my brother," said Ford.

"You killed Van Northwest," said Dipper.

"I doubt it," said Ford. "He's almost impossible to kill."

"If... if we said that Gravmanji is a game, would you get mad and hurt us?" Mabel asked.

Dipper winced.

"It's the only game in town," said Ford with a wry grin. "Come on, rest break's over."

They walked through a grove of plant that looked something like Audrey II from "Little Shop of Horrors."

"Since you're new here, let me fill you in on a couple of facts," said Ford. "One, Van Northwest is a horrible, dangerous villain. Two, I am a stalwart hero and an all-around classy guy."

He paused to free Dipper from one of the carniverous plants which had snapped him up.

"Yech," said Dipper, wiping off purple slime.

"The night-blooming ones aren't so bad," said Ford. "The daytime ones are poisonous."

They crossed a narrow rope bridge above a river.

"Stick close to me and you should be all right, in theory," said Ford. "I just make it minute by minute myself."

"Is there anything in this place that doesn't try to kill you?" Dipper asked.

The vines holding the bridge together came alive and snaked around them, and plant mouths snapped at them.

"Nope," said Ford.

With effort Ford tore them loose. "I hope you can swim," he said as he cut the bridge with a knife.

They plummeted down into the river, and then went over a waterfall. Finally they reached the shore.

"Did we have to do that?" Mabel asked.

"If you go all the way across the bridge, you're attacked by panthers. If you try to swim the river, there are crocodiles. Halfway across and down the falls is the only way."

"So things reset and repeat, like a video game?" asked Dipper.

"Yes, but don't be lulled into complacency by that. There are new threats all the time."

They came to a steep hill, and Ford had them step into a large basket, which he pulled up by hand.

"Where are we going?" asked Mabel.

"I'm taking you home," said Ford.

"Is this how we get home?" Mabel asked Dipper.

Dipper shrugged. "Anything is possible."

They reached a cave in the mountain, with "Ford's Lair – Keep Out" written on the ceiling.

"Here we are, home sweet home," said Ford.

The twins looked crestfallen.

"I know it isn't the Ritz, but it's something," said Ford.

"This place is cool!" said Mabel, making the best of things. "Look, toys!"

She picked up a toy truck and a baseball glove from the cave floor.

"Don't just grab stuff," said Dipper. "Ford, how long have you been here?"

"Thirty years, less a month or so," said Ford. "Those toys aren't mine. They came from other kids who played the game. They didn't exactly... survive. It's a tough neighborhood."

"Oh," said Mabel. She dropped the toys.

"Couldn't you solve your clue and end your turn?" asked Dipper.

"Clue? What are you talking about?" asked Ford.

"That's how it works, at least I hope so. There's a clue to solve to end the turn. I hope ending the turn means we get to go home," said Dipper.

"I never saw a clue," said Ford. "I was distracted. I never intended to play at all."

"What happened?" asked Mabel.

"I was a researcher. I found the Gravmanji game, and I realized it had immense power. I had it in my laboratory, studying it for insights into the experimental dimensional portal I was creating. I had just realized that my portal was dangerously unstable, so I called my two research assistants to come and help me shut it off. There was a fail-safe with three keys so no one person could shut it down alone. I wrote some last notes in my journals, then I jumped up from the desk. I knocked over the game by accident and the dice rolled. That's when I got pulled into the game. When my assistants arrived, they must have thought I got sucked into the Portal, and shut it off. Eventually the game ended up wherever you found it."

"It wasn't in any laboratory," said Mabel. "It was in the attic of our house."

"What was your clue?" asked Ford. "Maybe I can help you solve it and we can all go back to the real world together."

"Clear as ice, but worth the price," said Dipper.

"Aha! I know what that is!" said Ford. "Follow me!"


	3. Cheaters Never Prosper

**Chapter 3 – Cheaters Never Prosper**

Ford showed them a hole in the wall, a narrow tunnel leading to another small room. Using a spear with a mirror-like reflective surface, he gave them a look at a transparent object in a wooden box.

"It's too narrow for me, but you could make it," Ford told Dipper.

"Wait, it could be dangerous," said Mabel.

"Of course it's dangerous," said Dipper. "Everything here is. But it fits the clue and it's our best chance of getting home."

Dipper crawled through the tunnel.

"There's a kind of three-dimensional puzzle in this box," he called back to the others. "Wait, the surface is turning black like that clue display on the game board. It says, 'Solve the puzzle and go home.'"

"Yes!" said Ford and Mabel together.

Dipper took out the puzzle and began to twist the pieces around. It was like a Rubik's cube, but the end result was supposed to be a monkey face.

Out in the room, a gigantic spider appeared out of a hole in the ceiling. With a roar, it attacked.

"How could you live here all these years and not know there was a giant spider here?" Mabel asked.

"It must only appear after you touch the puzzle," said Ford, fending off the spider with the spear.

"Hurry up with that puzzle, bro-bro! We're getting eaten by a giant spider out here," said Mabel.

"I'm being eaten by tiny spiders in here!" Dipper called back. "They're not helping my concentration. This puzzle is as tough as a what-the-heck-a-hedron."

In desperation, Dipper took a short-cut. He smashed the puzzle to the floor, popping off the image panels from the puzzle. He put them back on to form the monkey face.

* * *

Instantly they all appeared in the living room of the Mystery Shack.

"Whoop whoop! We did it!" Mabel yelled. "Home."

"Yes!" shouted Dipper.

"Back from that cursed world at last," said Ford. "It's wonderful. Do you have any energy bars in the kitchen? I've missed those. But wait... this place looks familiar. This is my house!"

"Your house?" asked Mabel. "This is where we live."

"Well, it has been thirty years," said Ford. "No doubt the bank took it back for the unpaid mortgage and sold it to your family. I'm surprised they kept so many of my old artifacts, like the fossilized dinosaur skull beside the armchair, instead of putting them in a museum."

"We haven't lived here very long..." said Dipper.

"Broseph, why do you have a tail all of sudden?" Mabel asked. "And your face is all furry."

The puzzle that Dipper still held in his hands turned black for a moment and displayed the word, "Cheater."

"Oh no," said Ford. "You cheated on solving the puzzle, didn't you, Clyde?"

"Yeah, sort of..." said Dipper.

"This is very bad," said Ford. "One thing I've learned about Gravmanji is that it hates cheaters. We have to go back and solve it the right way."

"We left the game upstairs, in our bedroom in the attic," said Mabel.

As they headed up the rickety wooden stairs they saw jungle vines starting to grow on the banister.

"Gravmanji is coming here," said Ford. "If we don't stop it, there will be a Jungle-mageddon!

A horde of animals, including an elephant, a rhinoceros, and the three deranged monkeys from Van Northwest's hunting lodge rushed down the stairs. Ford and the kids leaped out of the way.

* * *

Just then, Sheriff Blubbs and Deputy Durland knocked at the door.

"Yoo-hoo!" called Durland. "We have police raffle tickets for sale. Buy one... umm... get one!"

"That's a great sales slogan, Deputy," said the Sheriff. "It's a delight to be with you."

The jungle animals charged out, knocking the door over on top of them.

"What was that?" asked Durland. "I'm scared!"

"Me too," said Blubbs.

The three monkeys jumped into their police car and drove it away.

* * *

The three adventurers went up the stairs and found it led directly into the jungle world.

"The attic is Gravmanji?" said Mabel.

"You still have the puzzle?" Ford asked Dipper as they began to trek through the jungle.

Dipper nodded.

"Keep it hidden, just in case," said Ford. "We need to find a safe place to work on it..."

Dipper hid it under his vest. This was a good thing, because pushing through the next bush revealed Van Northwest, who clubbed Ford down with the end of his rifle.

"I want the crystal artifact you have," Van Northwest told the children. "Give it to me!"

"Why do you want it, anyway?" asked Dipper.

"I want it, and that's all you need to know," said Van Northwest.

"We don't have it any more," Mabel lied.

By this time, Ford had recovered enough to say, "We traded it to the Gnomanji tribe, fearsome bloodthirsty warriors that no man can call friends."

"We had to trade it, for our lives," Dipper said.

"Then we shall trade back, for the very same price," said Van Northwest coldly.

* * *

They were held prisoners by Van Northwest's campfire that night, in a cage he had made by bending saplings and tying them together at the top and bottom. The jungle was quiet and the air was clammy.

Dipper was hanging upside-down from the top of the cage, by his tail.

"How are you holding out, monkey-boy?" Mabel asked.

"I'm all right," said Dipper. "I just want to go home."

"We'll find a way out of this," said Mabel. "I hope..."

"I was home," said Ford angrily. "Home after thirty years, if Clyde here hadn't cheated."

"Lay off my brother," said Mabel. "He didn't know what would happen, and he was in a real hurry to save us from the spiders."

"And after I saved you both," Ford grumbled. "You'd be twin heads on Van Northwest's wall by now, Bonnie and Clyde."

"Oh, one more thing I have to tell you," said Dipper. "I lied about our names when I wasn't sure we could trust you. We're Dipper and Mabel Pines."

"Pines? That's my last name. I'm Stanford Pines. I go by Ford for short."

"Stanford Pines? He's our Grunkle," said Mabel. "And our guardian."

"This can't be. What's your grandfather's name?" asked Ford.

"Sherman Pines," said Dipper.

"He got sick and passed away a few years ago," said Mabel. "That's why we went to live with our Grunkle Stan when our parents died."

"I think I know what happened," said Ford. "My crooked brother Stanley must have taken over my home and identity after I disappeared. Someday I'll have a word with him... if I ever get back."

"He's kind of crooked, but he's nice, too," said Mabel. "He's the only family we've got now."

"You've got me, too," said Ford. "If you're my brother Shermy's grandkids you're my grand-nephew and grand-niece."

"You're our Grunkle Ford?" asked Mabel.

"I prefer Great Uncle Ford, Thank you for telling me the truth. It has inspired me to work on our escape."

"You have a plan?" asked Dipper.

"I've noticed the Gnomanji tribe tracking us since dawn," said Ford. "I think they'll try to attack, and we can break out in the confusion."

A small man in an African mask and a cone-shaped hat sneaked up to the bottom of the cage and began working on the rope that held it shut.

Ford held his hand over Mabel's mouth. "Don't scream," he whispered. "The Gnomanji might carry you off to be their queen. They like screamers."

Mabel nodded, and Ford released her.

Van Northwest was looking the other direction, at a large hairy animal the Gnomanji had released as distraction. He fired at the charging beast and it ran off.

Then Van Northwest heard a noise behind him and saw the Gnomanji had the cage nearly open. "Outrageous!"

He would have fired at the tribesman, but he had just used his bullet firing at the other creature. With a roar of rage he came after the Gnomanji warrior with his gun raised as a club. Dipper used his agile monkey tail to pluck the weapon from the hunter's hand and smash it into him, sending him into the mouth of a carnivorous plant.

"Way to go, monkey-boy!" said Mabel.

The Gnomanji opened the cage and bore the escaped prisoners away on their backs. They carried them to a clearing and surrounded them, speaking in a series of clicks.

Ford translated. "Tribal Jeff, their leader, says 'Thanks for saving me from being batted.'"

"You're welcome," said Dipper.

"He also says the crystal monkey is theirs and they want it back.," said Ford. "But don't give it to them because it's your only way home. Let's make a run for it."

"It's theirs," said Dipper. "So far, honesty has worked better than anything else I've tried here."

He took out the crystal monkey and handed it to Tribal Jeff, who gave a long speech in clicks. The other warriors bowed down before the artifact.

"He says your honesty is rare, etcetera, etcetera," said Ford.

Tribal Jeff solved the puzzle almost completely, handing it to Dipper for the last step. When Dipper completed the puzzle, it glowed bright green and floated up. The words "Go home" appeared in the sky.

* * *

They were back in the attic, and everything was back to normal.

"All right! It worked!" Dipper said.

"And you're human again," said Mabel, hugging him.

Ford spotted the Gravmanji board and rushed over to it. "Quick, let's burn the game!"

But the board rumbled and a magic vortex pulled Ford back in. The box shut with a snap.

Mabel ran over to the game and opened it. "We've gotta go back!"

"No," said Dipper. "We could get killed."

"He's our great-uncle," said Mabel. "We have to help him. He helped us get out."

"But we don't even know his clue," said Dipper.

"So, it could take a few turns," said Mabel.

"It could take forever," said Dipper.

"Are you game, or not?" asked Mabel.

"I'm game," said Dipper. "But just a minute."

He went downstairs and returned with energy bars from the vending machine in the gift shop.

"Good idea, bro-bro," said Mabel. "Now it's my turn to roll."

She thew the dice and read the clue.

"Yaaah!" they both yelled as the game pulled them in again.


End file.
